by Glen Craney
As these heretics so want to claim,
Why has it grown in vast dominion,
Lest blessed by God’s Great Name?
These damp-eyed mongers of verse and sigh
Who sell with winks and nods,
Fool none with talk of Woman high;
She, the faith of their two gods.
The witch of Foix, black-gowned,
Doth spin across this keep
Dark webs of false-made sounds
While her wolves attack the sheep.
Folques took his seat, savoring the shattering silence.
Guilhelm stood and stared at his old rival, aware that the calumny against Esclarmonde had been calculated to throw him off balance. He thrust his left arm into the Bishop’s face and removed the iron prosthesis to reveal his cauterized stump. “Tell us, Cistercian! When has a lamb ever bitten a wolf like this?”
The battle-hardened Calatravans were not easily impressed by wounds, but they drew closer to inspect Guilhelm’s mutilation.
Folques turned aside and refused to be interrogated. When Guilhelm took the performance circle and waved away the musicians, Folques erupted to his feet to protest the tactic that had cost him the decision in Foix. “The Templar must sing with music! It is required!”
“Words alone will work this spell,” insisted Guilhelm.
“Proceed as you wish,” ruled the King. “But no bard has ever prevailed in this chamber without the accompaniment of the lute or viol.”
Guilhelm walked across the length of the hall, his eyes boring a challenge into each expectant face. He opted to forgo the trappings of rhyme and lyricism to tell a story that demanded unadorned prose. “Mine is a tale of three ladies from Occitania. Maidens who would have merited high courtesy from any knight here. The first, her name was Phillipa, a generous soul to all who crossed her path, be they Catholic or Cathar. Against the walls of Carcassonne came the Bishop of Toulouse and his mangy henchman de Montfort. These so-called Christians brought up their engines with Lady Phillipa tied to the beams. They used her chaste flesh as a shield for their cowardice.”
A swell of indignation filled the hall.
The King demanded, “She was released before the assault!”
“Released to the mercy of Our Lord,” said Guilhelm. “By my own arrow. The Cistercians were prepared to ram her against the walls.”
Folques bolted to his feet. “I had nothing—”
“Silence!” Peter threatened Folques with a warning finger. “Your time has come and gone, Cistercian!” He gestured for Guilhelm to continue.
Guilhelm punctuated each revelation with a clank of his heel as he strode across the stone-flagged floor. “At Lavaur, a holy lady named Giraude defended her chateau against de Montfort’s deadly sling. When the Lion and this purchased bishop captured her, they deemed the flames too quick a death. So they threw her into a well and stoned her slowly, rock by rock.” Guilhelm was about to say something more, but then took his seat.
Deprived of a finish, the audience lurched up in protest.
The King edged forward in his chair. “You said there was a third lady.”
Guilhelm crossed his arms in defiance. “I thought none wished me to go on without music.”
“Finish!” begged several voices. “Finish!”
Acceding to the shouted pleas, Guilhelm took to the floor again and shot a glare of promised retribution at Folques. “There was indeed a third lady. One who suffers even more than the others, if that be conceivable. She suffers more because she still lives with the shame of knowing that, in a nobler time, her indignity would not have gone unpunished. At Cabaret, where many present this night once sang for a meal, the bloody-toothed Lion and his tonsured trainer drove the lady from her home to suffer in the freeze of winter.
“You knew of her plight,” asked the King, “and did not go to her aid?”
“This warbling bishop clamped me in chains. But I asked of the lady, ‘Is there no knight who will defend you?’” He took a fractional pause for effect.
A furrow of concern pinched the King’s brow at the mention of Cabaret. “Well, out with it, Templar! What did the lady say?”
“She told me there was indeed a troubadour knight who had once professed his undying love. But he had long since forgotten his vow.”
“A name!” cried the King. “Did you extract the knave’s identity?”
Guilhelm nodded. “I too could not believe that a knight worthy of the honor would abandon a lady merely because of the passage of years.”
“Damn you!” cried the incensed Peter. “Tarry longer with me on this, Templar, and I’ll have you strung up from these rafters!”
Despite that threat, Guilhelm delayed a moment more to ratchet the tension. Finally, in lowered voice, he said, “The lady’s champion is of great station and resides in a far land. But she is too proud to send for him.”
The King bolted from his chair. “Do you know this negligent miscreant’s whereabouts? Or must I search him out myself?”
“His face is known to many,” said Guilhelm.
The King was livid with rage. “Expose the fiend! I swear by the Holy Blood of Christ that I will have him tracked down!”
Guilhelm lowered his gaze as if contemplating the monarch’s demand. When the hall had hushed to hear the offender’s name, he turned back toward the dais and revealed the secret of long ago that the Marquessa had supplied him. “It is you, Excellency.”
The chamber sizzled with outrage from the effrontery. Bollixed by the incomprehensible slander, Peter staggered back into his chair. The Calatravans lunged at Guilhelm and manhandled him down the aisle. Folques grinned at the Templar’s foolish miscalculation. The knights had nearly driven Guilhelm through the rear doors in banishment when—
“Wait!” ordered the King. “The lady’s name?”
Guilhelm fought off the Calatravans’ restraint. “Azalais.”
The King’s eyes extruded from their sockets and his mouth twitched as if he was seized by some malady. His knights rushed to his aid, but he pushed them aside. He charged off the dais and drove Folques against the wall. “Does the Templar speak true?”
Folques grasped the crucifix at his breast to remind the monarch that he remained under the protection of the Church.
“Answer me, damn you! Or I’ll send you to Rome by the limb!”
“The woman gave sustenance to heretics,” said Folques.
Pale and tremulous, the King turned with guilt-hooded eyes toward Guilhelm. In a quavering voice, he said, “State your petition.”
“Name it, Templar,” agreed Vidal. “You’ve earned the prize fairly.”
The other troubadours nodded their agreement to the King’s decision.
“The lady shall exercise my right,” said Guilhelm.
Shamed by the exposure of his negligence, the King could not bring himself to look at Esclarmonde. “I am at your command, my lady.”
Esclarmonde had not yet recovered from the dolorous effect of Guilhelm’s story. He had not warned her in advance of his intent to employ such an unorthodox strategy. After debating how burdensome a benefice she could risk seeking from the King, she said, “I ask only that you open your kingdom to my people as a refuge from the Cistercian massacres.”
Folques fought past the Calatravan guards to deliver a white-lipped warning. “Allow one heretic past your borders and you’ll lie buried in profane ground for the rest of eternity!”
The King turned to his Calatravans for counsel. The knights raised their swords to indicate a willingness to follow him even under the threat of a papal damnation. Anguished by the dilemma, Peter mulled Esclarmonde’s request. Finally, eyes reddened with emotion, he shook his head in reluctant refusal. “As a Christian monarch, I cannot sit idle and allow your people under interdiction to straggle across the mountains to my land.”
Esclarmonde’s shoulders sank in numbing defeat. She fought back tears and nodded her acceptance of his judgment, then wrapped her cloak o
ver her shoulders in preparation to leave the hall. Folques chased her out with a lording glare. At last, he had cornered her outside the lair of Montsegur. Denied Peter’s protection, he would see to it that she was served with an arrest warrant within the hour and returned to Toulouse to face the tribunal. At last, the backs of the heretics would be broken and—
“I will go to them!” Peter bolted to his feet with such propulsion that his chair was sent flying. “I will cross the mountains and avenge this outrage against our Occitan brothers and sisters!”
Folques’s smugness melted into slack-jawed disbelief.
Cheered by their monarch’s decision, the Calatravans drove the stunned Folques down the aisle with jeers and stabs. He fought off their harassment long enough to come face to face with Esclarmonde. With a voice crackling in bitterness, he vowed, “You’ll not work your sorcery on me again. As God is my witness, the next time our eyes meet will be the last.”
The Sons of Light and the Forces of Darkness shall fight together to show the strength of God with the roar of a great multitude and the shouts of gods and men; a day of disaster.
- The War Scroll, Dead Sea Scrolls
XXVII
Muret
September 1213
Simon spied a caulk-dusted rider trotting up the Saverdun road with a bloodied Aragonese knight dragged at the end of a rope. In a foul mood from having needlessly driven his weary cavalry across the barren causses, Simon spurred into a gallop to berate his tardy brother whom he had sent ahead to scout the Wolf’s whereabouts. “Where in Hell’s name have you been? You’ve left me blind for two days!”
“You’ve been blind since you fell ass-first from the womb.” Guy dismounted and produced a letter from his hauberk. “Here’s more reconnaissance than you’ll wish to stomach. The Spaniard put up quite a fight for it.”
Simon pressed his nose to the captured correspondence to aid his myopia. He read a few lines and broke an incipient smile. “Bring the lad to me.”
Folques prodded up the Aragon king’s firstborn, Jaimes, a sensitive seven-year-old who had been left in the custody of the Cistercians pending his marriage to Simon’s daughter. Simon clasped the frightened boy’s chin and tried to divine Peter’s intention from the son’s reaction to the news. “Your old man has crossed the Venasque Pass. Would you like to see him?” When Jaimes brightened at the prospect, Simon flung the boy onto his rump. “You’d best hope he’s as eager to see you ... alive.”
“Raymond will march out from Toulouse to join forces with Peter,” warned Folques. “And the Wolf will be drooling for a fight.”
Simon crushed the letter in his fist. “Then we’ll finally get to see their craven faces by the light of day. I’ve almost forgotten what they look like.”
“We should return to Carcassonne at once,” said Folques.
Simon nullified that advice with a contemptuous spit. “I’ll not be holed up by these meddling Spaniards.” He drew his dagger and pressed it against the prisoner’s jugular. “How many knights does Peter bring?”
“A thousand,” said the Aragon courier. “More in infantry.”
Simon chortled with feigned indifference to reassure his apprehensive troops. He read the letter again, this time aloud, mocking Peter’s famous lilt:
Dearest Azalais,
I find myself bent low with grief by the report of your misfortune. I leave on the morrow to avenge the offense dealt to you by this contemptible Norman. If you can find it in your heart to forgive my tardy response, meet me within the fortnight at Muret, where I shall endeavor to shower upon you love enough and more to amend a lifetime of indignities.
Your neglectful champion, Peter
Simon twisted the whimpering boy’s earlobe. “I fear, pup, that your mama’s not the wench being courted.”
The soldiers cackled and made swooning sounds, but Folques did not share in their mirth. “You know the woman. You threw her out at Cabaret.”
Simon’s eyes darted to and fro, a certain sign that a stratagem was forming between his ears. “The memory of a man’s first lover always grows more false with time. Is that not true, Bishop? You were once schooled in the mysterious ways of seduction.” When done needling Folques about his troubadour past, Simon ordered Guy, “Find me a red-headed Delilah with a comely face.”
Folques and Guy traded dubious glances, questioning if Simon had become punch-drunk from too many days in the saddle. While they were distracted, the Aragon prisoner attempted to crawl away. Simon captured the man by the scalp and sliced his throat from ear to ear.
Peter’s son burst into tears, terrified by the grisly execution. “My father will come for me!”
Simon grasped the boy’s nape and forced his eyes inches from the pooling blood. “You must give up that hope, lad. My victory against that whoreson’s bastard is not in doubt, for God is on my side. If you behave, I may let you sit on my lap while I fart on your pappy’s throne.”
Guilhelm rushed into the Aragon royal pavilion breathless from his forced ride from the front lines below Muret. “The conscripts have breached the Sales gate.”
Elated by the unexpected breakthrough, Roger de Foix and his Occitan knights converged on a map to plan their assault against the small crusader force that they had trapped inside the walled bastide, which was situated a few leagues south of Toulouse. Count Raymond’s militia, ill-disciplined and green, had been set loose on its western bulwarks to sap the garrison’s strength in preparation for the full attack on the morrow. The Southern barons knew they would have to move quickly to capitalize on this propitious turn.
King Peter remained reclined on his chaise, in no hurry to settle upon an order of battle. The flaps had been retracted to allow him to lounge in comfort while monitoring the siege in the vale below. Raymond of Toulouse paced impatiently, forced to endure yet another debate between the monarch and the troubadour Miraval on the superiority of Provencal poetry over Arab verse.
“All in harmony with God’s plan,” said Peter with a wine-induced yawn. “My congratulations to your amateur sappers, Raymond. I dare say my Turkish ballistae had a hand in it.”
Guilhelm was alarmed by the King’s lethargy. “De Montfort rides this hour to relieve the garrison. We must cut him off before he reaches the river.”
Peter sank into his silk-cased pillows and waved his goblet at a scullion for more wine. “All in due time, Templar. At Las Navas, I stared down the Moors for two weeks to weaken their knees. I even managed to write three chansons during the—”
Count Raymond slapped the flask from the startled attendant’s grasp. “Enough of your insufferable tales! My lands hang in the balance!”
The King arose to confront Raymond, the only baron present with sufficient stature to speak to him so boldly. “I have this Norman churl exactly where I want him. Now he has no choice but to meet me on the open field.”
Guilhelm and the officers traded sullen glances, fearful that the adulations showered on Peter during his march through Occitania had gone to his head. Greeted as a conquering hero, he had accepted without blush the comparisons with Caesar and Alexander. Guilhelm sympathized with Count Raymond’s frustration, but the baron’s own vacillations were so notorious that he held no coin to spend on demands for quick action. “My lord, de Montfort follows no code of honor,” warned Guilhelm. “He’ll employ any ruse to gain an advantage. I implore you to strike him while his forces are still divided.”
The King walked unsteadily, impaired by the evening’s drawn-out imbibing. “How many men do we have?”
“A thousand knights in your camp,” said Guilhelm “The Counts of Foix, Toulouse, and Commiges command five hundred each.”
“And de Montfort?”
Guilhelm hesitated. “Eight hundred.”
“Infantry?”
“The thirty men holding the city.”
The King took another healthy draught and licked his lips, confident in the developing calculus of his case. “Our foot soldiers?”
“Forty thousand,” conceded Guilhelm.
The King withered his officers for doubting his judgment. “Who here says I cannot defeat de Montfort on the plains with such odds?” Finding none willing to take up his challenge, he stumbled back to his chaise and launched a loud belch. “Order the Toulousians to stand off. When de Montfort enters the city, I’ll have him snared like the spotted skunk he is.”
Incredulous, Count Raymond attempted to raise another protest, but seeing Peter marinating in such a languid state, the baron could only sulk from the pavilion muttering imprecations.
Peter waved off Raymond’s petulance and motioned up a courier who had been waiting in the wings. Hearing the whispered message, the monarch broke a wide grin and smoothed his robes. “Out! All of you! And make certain the flasks are filled.” As the knights departed, Peter winked at Guilhelm. “Templar, I have you to thank for this night.”
“My lord?”
“Lady Azalais calls on me.”
Guilhelm considered such a visitation unseemly on the night before a battle. Yet after being chastised for questioning the King’s strategy, he deemed it imprudent to say more. Making his way to his own quarters, he crossed paths with a hooded woman being led to the pavilion by two Calatravans. He was afforded only a fleeting glimpse of the lady from Cabaret. She was still beautiful with full lips painted red and skin as white as a swan’s neck. He had not seen her since the banishment from her chateau. She seemed not only remarkably recovered from that calamity but younger than he remembered. He turned to offer a greeting, but the Calatravans whisked her into the royal pavilion before he could speak to her.
Simon and Folques led their eight hundred crusaders across the Muret bridge under a full moon. The Toulousian militia, massed between the river and walls, held back from attacking in accord with Peter’s orders. But the Lion’s taunts became too much for them to endure. The Occitans charged across the span, too late to prevent the crusaders from gaining the gate. Exhilarated by the ease of his crossing, Simon sped through the bourg and made his way to the citadel where his beleaguered garrison greeted him with cries of joy. Hearing the roar, the pursuing Toulousians beat a disorganized retreat to their earthworks, convinced that the Lion was launching a counterattack.
